The week in wildlife

The week in wildlife

Healing dolphins, a donkey-zebra hybrid and England's most dangerous fish - the pick of this week's images from the natural world

Friday 30 July 2010 07.00 EDT

A pair of fledgling barn swallows are fed on a perch above the seventh hole at the Eugene, Oregon Country Club. The most widespread species of swallow in the world, barn swallows, show remarkable agility in flight as they feed on flying insects

Scores of new ponds have been created and dozens more restored to help protect toads and more unusual species such as the tadpole shrimp and the one-grooved diving beetle, the Environment Agency said this week

A weever fish, the UK's most poisonous fish. Staff at the Blue Reef aquarium in Portsmouth, Hampshire, are putting out warnings after a weever fish was brought into their centre by a local fisherman. Although the chances of stepping on the fish were slight, the pain endured can by 'excruciating' and can cause limbs to swell up

Cypress trees killed by saltwater intrusion in wetlands near Houma, Louisiana, US. Environmentalists are calling on the White House to speed up the restoration of the oil-damaged Mississippi River delta by getting BP to pay $5bn for environmental damage

An endangered hairy-nosed otter walking in a forest reserve in the state of Sabah on Borneo Island. The hairy-nosed otter, one of the rarest otter species, has been spotted in Sabah's Deramakot Forest Reserve, marking its first sighting since 1997

Marine diatom cells (
Rhizosolenia setigera), which are an important group of phytoplankton in the oceans. Much of life on Earth depends on tiny plant plankton. They are the foundation of the bountiful ocean food web, make half the world's oxygen and suck up harmful carbon dioxide. And they are
declining sharply

A Boto Cor-de-Rosa, pink river dolphin, swims in the Negro River in Novo Airao city, northern Brazil. Physiotherapist Igor Simoes created Bototerapia (pink dolphin therapy), which involves swimming with the dolphins in the belief that the ultrasonic waves they emit will help cure health problems

A nine-month-old rhinoceros called Vuma, centre, rests with two others at the animal orphanage of the private rhino and lion Nature Reserve in Krugersdorp, South Africa. The animal orphanage recently welcomed Vuma, who was orphaned after poachers hacked out his mother's horn and left her dead

Seeds of tara tree at Lomas de Lachay national reserve in the desert foothills of Huaral province in Peru. The reserve features a unique mist-fed ecosystem of wild plant and animal species, whose only source of moisture is fog from the ocean

A three-year-old stallion foal and his mother at the Wilhelma zoo in Stuttgart, Germany, resembling a cross-breed of a donkey and zebra. He is the eleventh foal of an endangered species that only lives at the Wilhelma zoo